Tag Archive: faith

I’m in my second day of a five day fast with night janitors for a cause most people don’t even realize is a cause: many immigrant women cleaning buildings across our country live in fear of sexual assault by predatory managers who know they are working alone and need to keep their jobs. It’s stuff so sinister you can picture one of those cartoon villains twisting his moustache as he plans the act. But it is real. It is happening to people who clean buildings we or our family members work in. And finally, despite all the risks, some women stepped forward to speak the truth about their experiences and change things for their sisters.

I first learned about this hidden crisis during a screening of the Frontline film Rape on the Night Shift a couple of weeks ago at the state building in Oakland. You can watch the whole thing online and I dare you not to cry. What moved me even more than the film, though, was listening to the stories of women who had to find the courage to risk their jobs and means of supporting their families to do what was right for themselves and for other women at risk. What struck me in particular that day was a young woman whose mother is part of the campaign. She said something along the lines of “there are certain things you never expect to talk about with your mother: sex, rape, violence at work.” She then expressed how proud she was of her mother and how proud she was to stand with her. I was deeply moved.

Last week, one of the organizers of the film told me that the workers would be fasting Monday through Friday of this week, demanding that Governor Brown follow his moral compass and sign AB 1978 into law. According to the United Service Workers West,

Female janitors face unique risk of sexual harassment and assault as their jobs often require working alone at night in empty buildings, an epidemic PBS Frontline profiled in “Rape on the Night Shift,” and in a report from UC Berkeley earlier this year: “Perfect Storm: How Supervisors Get Away with Sexually Harassing Workers Who Work Alone at Night.”

AB 1978, the Property Services Worker Protection Act would enhance the Department of Industrial Relations’ authority to prevent assault by requiring employer training and prevention plans, establishing a hotline for victims, and toughening enforcement for employers who leave workers at risk.

As janitor and activist Maria Gonzalez said,

“I was sexually assaulted at work, twice. The employer transferred the supervisor and me to the same building. With nowhere to go, I felt trapped. As survivors, we have stepped out of the shadows to fight back against rape and exploitation, because we know the bosses count on our silence to keep us vulnerable. Ya Basta! We built a movement that can’t be stopped because more and more women are coming forward to support each other and create a safe workplace. Now Governor Brown must do his part and sign AB 1978, because no woman should ever be afraid to go to work.”

I heard stories like this from the women who were fasting when I met them yesterday. One woman was assaulted, took self-defense lessons, fought off her boss with a letter opener when he attacked her again, and was fired for her efforts. Other women were assaulted, forced to do things against their will, and raped. And they said they were glad to be doing this, that they had released their fear, that they were proud to be doing this for the women who follow them into these workplaces. They were excited to be fasting.

There is something about workers fasting that hits me at my core as a person of faith as well as an activist. At a rally yesterday, a labor organizer announced that the workers would be staging a hunger strike.

But I met the workers. They were fasting. It’s a different thing, which is why I was moved to join them in their fast as soon as I heard they were planning it.

Fasting has strong, ancient roots. Fasting is a critical part of the Christian faith (and Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish among others) for spiritual as well as sometimes justice reasons. But even when justice is part of it, fasting involves connecting to something bigger than oneself (and in this case praying for divine intervention to evoke right action by our state’s elected leader).

Fasting can be about community, even when it is a solitary practice. Several of the women fasting this week are Catholic, like Governor Brown. I saw some of them holding rosaries as they received a blessing from Rabbi Rothbaum yesterday. I saw some of them reading Catholic devotionals in Spanish. And I heard one of them say “Having religious leaders visit us and pray with us reminds me that we are not just activists. We are tools being used by God to make the world better.” The ten women fasting will be community for each other, and I hope that knowing I am fasting with them will remind them that there is a larger community supporting them. But most importantly, I hope that their spiritual act will remind their and my governor that our shared ties of faith call us to treat God’s children with deep compassion and dignity, and that our shared faith does not allow evil to continue undisrupted.

When the workers shout “¡Ya basta!” it is a prayer. It is the prayer of our God who will not tolerate sexual violence. And it is God’s own prayer put into action by faithful women, as has happened for millenia: faithful women have put hands and feet to God’s prayers.

I believe the saint Teresa of Avila is saying to the women fasting at the Capitol today, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

And the workers I met, who have survived sexual violence in the workplace, are serving as Christ’s hands and feet, answering God’s “¡Ya basta!” prayer as loudly as God would wish.

If you live in California, please contact Governor Brown and ask him to sign AB 1978 today to end rape on the night shift: (916) 445-2841.

When I was in eighth grade, I saw a bumper sticker on a car (in Akron, Ohio) that said, “Honk if you support civil rights, religious liberty, gay rights, disability rights, women’s equality…” I turned to my mother and said, “I would honk for the rest of them, but gay rights?” My mother is really smart and so said nothing, knowing I would have to do the math in my head about who deserved rights and who didn’t. Because she had raised me to know that everyone deserves rights and deserves self-determination.

Some folks still talk about homosexuality being a choice. You know what I got to choose every day of my cis-gender heterosexual life? I got to choose whether to acknowledge the basic human dignity of the LGBTQ community as a whole. I got to choose whether to stand with LGBTQ individuals or whether to be silent and therefore participate in violence done to LGBTQ people and the LGBTQ community. Because when I throw the LGBTQ community under the bus (through my words OR through my silence), I’m also doing harm to every individual within the community.

That’s what choice looks like.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe this tragedy is about access to horrifically dangerous weapons. I believe it is about “toxic masculinity.” While I think it has very little to do with Islam or even ISIS, I believe it is about the values cultivated in relationship to craving a role in militarized organizations. Since the instance of gun violence closest to me is connected to two people’s struggle over their sexual identities in relationship to one another, I have no problem believing this might be about the murderer’s internalized hatred unleashing itself on others. And it is about lack of exposure to consistent teaching that God loves all of God’s children and that God never wants to see unmitigated, unrestrained violence against God’s children. For millenia we have failed to teach consistently and strongly that above all things God abhors violence.

But the massacre at Pulse is also about over 100 anti-gay bills in 22 states this year, creating a growing culture of acceptance of contempt for LGBTQ life. And it’s about pastors and politicians preaching hate that creates a culture of bullying and suicide. (More here and here .) And it’s about the ways race and gender identity have been pitted against each other as if there’s only enough tolerance for one, and we might have to choose us versus them…and if you’re both a racial/religious minority and LGBTQ, then there is no room for you. Millions of people helped set the stage for this tragedy. And that’s where my choices matter.

I’m not Orlando. And in all the ways I haven’t fought to reject efforts to legislate against the basic human dignity of LGBTQ people in the past year and for decades, in all the ways I’ve not fought hard enough for LGBTQ incusion in the church, in all the ways I’ve not created space for people to know that they are not bad people for struggling with their sexual or gender identity, I’m the people who let Orlando happen.

Will prayer cut down the hoodlum bands?Will prayer stop the lynchbug hands?If all of these things my prayers can do,I’ll pray till I am black and blue.

If prayer will bring us union love,I’ll pray and pray and pray some more.I’ll pray all day from door to doorAnd fall at nite to pray some moreMy prayer with a union label.

When I worked in Congress, my boss was MUCH more comfortable in a union hall than in a church, and I think the labor leaders he worked with appreciated that.

I’m comfortable in both. And I remember how uncomfortable I made my boss during my interview when I told him that after working in Congress, I planned to go into the ministry. But I finally realize that my comfort in both the union hall (well, on the picket line) and in the church actually puts me in sync with a lot of the workers I’ve gotten to know over the years. It turns out they’re not just workers; they’re people, and often people of faith. And I think that matters as we reflect on the intersection of faith and labor.

The relationship between organized labor and labor-friendly religious leaders has been an awkward one for as long as I’ve known about it, and I think there might be a few reasons for that:

Our perceptions of each other limit our capacity to support each other. We think of them as no-holds-barred anything-goes ends-justifies-means folks, and they think of us as not understanding how much is at stake, being dreamers instead of realists and not being particularly good strategists. Both of us might be a little right.

We’re both used to be treated with authority and being heard, so it is less than comfortable for either of us when the other group expects at least as much (and usually more of) the same courtesy.

Many high level labor leaders are not convinced that religious leaders bring anything to the movement other than symbolically blessing what labor has already put in the works.

Many clergy are squeamish not about the goals or even the tactics of a given labor campaign but get squeamish about dehumanizing the opposition (which frankly can be the most uplifting and energizing part of a labor rally), and sometimes that single thing stops them from participating more fully in the work of solidarity.

The biggest tension in the movement is around what clergy petulantly refer to as “rent-a-collar,” by which they mean they have no voice in the process of the movement or the strategy or the goal setting; they’re called the night before to show up at a rally to offer a prayer.

Clergy often resent this because they feel a little used. But the truth is, I’m not sure that most labor leaders see us as bringing much to the table—in the work, those who bring financial resources and people power make a campaign successful, and that’s not always the faith community.

At the Interfaith Worker Justice conference I attended this week, I’ve met people from organizations across the country who really are bringing “faith people power” to campaigns and as a result ending up with a seat at the table. I’m also meeting faith organizers who brought the people power and still got left out of the decision-making process because at the last moment labor leaders got anxious that pie-in-the-sky religious leaders would ruin a compromise bill by holding out for something better. I’ve even met a faith-student-community organizer who connected workers into a union through his work with faith leaders and then found out that the union wasn’t ready to go to bat for the particular workers who had joined the union. (And while my stories are focused on the faith community, I suspect my friends in labor could point to times the faith community sold out or abandoned or just messed up campaigns over the years.)

Our relationship, labor and faith, is a mixed bag.

There’s something I’ve begun to reflect on deeply, though, of late. I think there’s something the faith community brings to the workers that labor leadership doesn’t always recognize, and I want to tell a story and then share what I think it’s about.

I spoke at a fast food workers’ rally a month ago. A labor leader translated for me—most of the workers were primarily Spanish speakers. She was fierce and amazing and led chants and actually got us enthusiastic even though we had been up since 4 or 5.

I told the story of Passover. When she got to that word in her translation, she said, “I don’t know that word.” Five people at the front said, “Pascua.” I continued with my story and said something about Pharaoh. She paused in the translation, and even before she could ask, fifteen people stage whispered“faraón.”

She didn’t know the story of Passover. It did not carry power for her. It did not inspire her.

But the workers knew the story of Passover. They knew what it meant to be Israelites working hard for an Egyptian overlord, and when they looked like they might be a threat, their work was made even harder.

And the workers knew how that story ends. It ends with liberation by a God who cares about their conditions and their families and their dignity.

Plus, she might not have known why it was really funny for me to say that Ronald McDonald reminded me of Pharaoh, but they sure did.

We share a common story of hope, one that touches the most intimate parts of our personal struggles in life and can also offer us support and courage in the larger battles we have to face; even a struggle against a global corporation that has no desire to keep its workers happy and healthy members of the community at virtually no expense to the corporation.

The labor leader doing translation for me is heroic. She puts in work hours that would put me in the hospital. She stands with workers in scary times. She wants nothing in this world more than to see them paid what they are worth (although she’ll have to settle for $15 and a union).

Her union is also amazing in that they are pouring so much of their limited resources and limited people power into supporting workers who are not currently dues-paying union members and very possibly never will be. Obviously the union hopes that will change, but they’re investing themselves in this campaign with the awareness that it probably won’t, and they’re standing up for non-unionized workers anyhow, because who else will stand with them? The unions I work with are embattled and struggling against great odds they’ve struggled against since they were founded. The power of the union is more faithful and hopeful than that of most churches, and it often embodies the kind of community we in the faith community only talk about.

But the moral of the story is this: The union leaders may not find comfort and inspiration in their shared struggle with bible characters, but the underpaid fast food workers knew that story better than I do, and in two languages. And in that lies a connection.

There is something about the power generated between faithful workers and labor-loving religious leaders that feels different than anything else, because it allows all of us to bring our whole selves into the fight.

Many of the “rank and file” members of unions, many of the low-wage workers who have not yet been unionized, are deeply faithful people. And some of them attend churches with pastors and priests and imams who won’t stand with them when they’re being mistreated because those religious leaders want to avoid “politics” (except the politics of respectability). That is wounding to a person of faith; it can even cause a crisis of faith. So when a different religious leader shows up and lets them know that their commitment to justice IS part of their relationship with God, redemption and healing can occur.

I have seen religious leaders contribute to the strategy of a campaign. I have seen religious leaders strengthen coalitions and hold them together when tension mounted. I have seen religious leaders get better conditions in an agreement from politicians than labor would have gotten sheerly because those politicians had been shamed into being their better selves. So I think there are a lot of reasons for labor and religion to work together better; I think we bring a lot to the larger work for justice and equity.

One of the most prophetic workers/leaders I know, walking with me from a 6AM rally to a 9AM action.

But there’s one particular and yet incredibly ephemeral reason for us to be plugged into campaigns over the long term: we share a story with workers who face fatigue and a lack of institutional support. When they feel beaten up in their private lives, they pray and read scripture and turn to God. When they feel beaten up in their work for justice, they should have the same outlet. And on a good day, a courageous pastor or priest or imam can bring that opportunity to a fellow sister or brother in the faith.